


she told me more about me than i knew myself

by Anonymous



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Non-Graphic Violence, Sebastien is only really mentioned in here, Songfic, Tarot, he doesn't play a big role okay, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 10:21:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20356882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: David gets a Tarot card reading when he's living in NYC. It's not really what expected.





	she told me more about me than i knew myself

**Author's Note:**

> Um. This is a bunch of bullshit. :)
> 
> Also in my mind David is not really famous here.

_ [From Travis 9:07pm]  
_She was named the Fortune Queen of New Orleans last year, David. 

_ [From Travis 9:07pm]  
_She just moved to the city a few weeks ago

_ [From Travis 9:08pm]  
_You’re lucky she agreed to see you!!!!!!

David rolled his eyes and puffed out a cloud of smoke, dropping his cigarette butt on the sidewalk and crushing it under the toe of his shoe. He rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses. Sebastien had tried to talk him out of going tonight—in favor of a delicious night _ in— _ but it had been _ ages _ since David had his fortune read, and Travis had never steered him wrong before. 

Plus Seb would be home when he got back for all kinds of fun. 

**[To Travis 9:09pm]  
** **Well she’s late. Couldn’t predict the traffic?**

David heard tires crunching down the alley he’d been waiting in, as instructed by his friend Travis, hoping he wasn’t about to be brutally murdered. The lights next to the door of this... _ establishment _ had burnt out the minute he lit up to smoke. 

A sleek black limo came to a stop a few feet away, and David squinted to peer in the back window. The tint was _ dark _ and he doubted that he’d have been able to see inside even in broad daylight. He waited—and waited—until finally, the driver’s door opened and an older gentleman walked around the car to pull open the back door. 

A woman, early 40s, maybe, if David had to guess, stepped onto the curb, taking the driver’s proffered hand for balance. She was wearing—well, David could see _ a lot _ of scarves, in way too many patterns for his taste. A particularly garish orange one practically glowed in the dark. Beyond that, it just looked like a lot of flowy fabric. He’d give her credit for committing to the role, at least. One safely perched on the pavement, she turned toward David, and he saw a huge black cat cradled in her arm. She pet its head softly, murmured words that David was pretty sure were not English and set the feline on the ground. It wound around her legs once, twice, and then stalked off into the night. 

David was three seconds away from peacing out of the bizarre situation when the woman turned to look at him, gesturing _ come here _ with her pointer. “Follow.”

She heaved open a nondescript door with no sign, and David followed her. _ This is a bad idea. _

He ended up in some darkened room pretty deep into the building—they could have been on the other side of the block by now. _ Definitely going to be a murder here someday, _ he thought. The lights were already on when she walked through the... _ shudder… _beaded curtain, but the lamps had black fabric hanging over them. 

The woman said nothing, just pointed to a chair at a small table, and then kept her hand extended after he sat down. “Oh,” he said, pulling a wad of cash from the pocket of his leather jacket. 

“I’ll be with you soon,” the woman said, pulling her dark hair out of a clip and heading into another room behind another… beaded curtain. 

David took a deep breath and scrunched up his nose. Was there incense? He remembered smelling it outside, maybe it was the woman’s perfume. He looked around the room, checking for a burning candle or something. Was it...patchouli? White jasmine? He noted the faded wallpaper peeking out between huge ornate-looking tapestries, and then decided to keep his eyes to himself. He thought he may have heard whispering from behind the curtain, but when he craned his neck around to see through, it was mostly dark. _ Okay, so I’m hearing things, no big deal. _

The woman floated back into the room, lit match pinched between her pointer and thumb. As she made her way around the room, lighting what was turning out to be dozens of candles, David heard the faint tinkling of music drifting in from the dark room beyond the beaded curtain, and watched as the woman started to sway in time with the rhythm. 

He glanced at his phone. _ 9:45pm_. This was turning out to be a way later night than he planned.

He pulled out his phone. 

**[To Seb <3 9:30pm]  
** **babe i’ll be home later than i thought**

_ [From Seb <3 9:35pm]  
_ _Out w friends. Love u_

David sighed. Well. He would just have to have fun by himself later, then. 

Finally, the woman sat down across from him and held out a deck of large tarot cards face down in her palm. She stared at him and he blinked back. She nodded at the deck and he looked around awkwardly, waiting for direction. She shoved the deck closer to him and he tentatively reached out to lay his hand on top of the deck. She immediately covered his hand with hers, fingers so cold against his skin that he tried to jerk his hand back. She squeezed his hand, though, pressing it hard between her palm and the deck of cards, long enough that he started to get uncomfortable. He opened his mouth to comment, but she loosened her grip and dropped his hand.

The reading was… weird. Firstly, he’d never seen this wonky, wild diamond formation before (and he’d had his very fair share of readings). Secondly, every once in a while the woman would speak in a series of strange words that David would _ swear _ were English, but that he definitely couldn’t understand. When he asked for clarification, the woman would wave her hand and move on. 

Most of the stuff was boring: gallery would be prosperous, his family is supportive, comments about his future path and career goals. Generally positive, and David started thinking he’d definitely come back for another reading in his standard 6 weeks. But then… she turned up a card that seemed to startle her—she dropped it on the table as if it had burned her fingers. David leaned in to peer closer at the card, but the woman dropped the rest of the deck right on top of it. She jumped out of her chair, toppling it over, and leaned her hands on the table to speak to David terrifyingly close. 

“The man you love,” she whispered. “Is secretly true to someone else.”

David jerked back. “Ex_cuse _ me?” He scooted his chair back and stood up. “How—how dare you!” He knew you couldn’t get that kind of information from the cards.

The woman stood up straight. “My advice,” she said, beginning to gather her cards together frantically, “is to leave this place—and _ never _ come back.”

David gripped the lapels of his jacket. “Okay, what the fu—”

“Forget you ever saw my face,” she hissed and flew back behind the beaded curtain. 

David hurried back to his apartment, shooting a _ Can you come home early? _ text to Sebastien from the cab. By the time he arrived home, he hadn’t gotten a response, so he changed into pajamas and crawled into bed, thoroughly shaken from the night’s events. 

_ [To Travis 11:30pm]  
_ _Okay, so that was SUPER weird, Trav. How do you know her, again?_

Travis was probably getting stoned, so David tossed his phone on his nightstand and pulled the covers up to his chin. He tried to block the woman’s haunted voice from his memory, but the sight of her as she told him his fate was burned into his brain. _ The man you love is secretly true to someone else_, she’d claimed. David flopped around, pounding his pillow to adjust its shape.

Just as he was drifting off, breath evening out to a slow, deep, rhythm, he got a whiff of Sebstien’s incense and wondered if his boyfriend had left some burning in the bathroom. It smelled a little different than usual, kind of jasmine-y. _ Seb must have picked up a new scent. _

David rolled out of bed and padded into the bathroom, only to find… nothing. No burning incense. Not even unlit incense. He huffed out a frustrated breath and headed back to bed, snuggling under the covers with a deep inhale and… there was that smell again. He sat up and flicked on his bedside lamp. He inhaled again, to make sure he wasn’t going crazy and there was that smell again! _ What the fuck? _

He got out of bed and shook out the blankets to see if there were any random bottles of Seb’s questionable cologne that were accidentally dropped in the bed. He lifted the pillows and saw—a scarf? It _ definitely _ wasn’t David’s, he would quite literally _ never_, and it didn’t really seem like Sebastien’s style, though he did have an eccentric ‘fashion’ sense. 

David lifted it closer to his face to give it sniff and—his mind was instantly flooded with the image of the woman who’d read his cards, and her face as she said _ forget you ever saw my face. _He dropped the scarf with a gasp, stumbling back a few steps, the scent of patchouli and jasmine from the scarf—and the scent of patchouli and jasmine from the tiny, darkened room—clung to his nostrils as red spots swam in his periphery. 

He stared in horror at the scarf laying damningly on the bed. David recognized the pattern, now, as he stared and stared and stared, vision blurring with rage and humiliation and—

He ran to the bathroom and collapsed onto his knees as he emptied his stomach into the toilet bowl. He was gasping for breath now, eyes watering from shame and _ how could this be happening again? _David squeezed his eyes shut, pressing a hand to his mouth to stifle a sob. 

Sebastien. 

_ … is secretly true to someone else. _

That… gypsy woman. 

_ Forget you ever saw my face. _

David wouldn’t forget. He wiped the back of his hand roughly over his mouth and stood up, spitting into the toilet before flushing. He moved to the sink and rinsed his mouth, leaning his hands heavily on the vanity. Squinting against the harsh lights, he took in his appearance. His hair was fluffy from rolling around in his bed, and he hadn’t put his glasses on yet. Sebastien always though he looked weird without his glasses. _ Well, fuck him. _

David’s mind was racing, all of a sudden, thoughts of Sebastien, that scarf, the scent, the woman he would never, ever forget. 

He grabbed a box of contacts—stashed away in the cabinet from lack of regular use—and rummaged around for his solution. He carefully put them in and took the rest with him into the bedroom. He got a duffle bag. He pulled sweaters and jeans and trousers off hangers, grabbed shoes off shelves, and then grabbed another duffle bag because all that stuff definitely wouldn’t fit in one bag. 

David was moving quickly now, heading back to the bathroom for his most expensive skincare, reaching into the back of the closet to fumble the dial of the safe. He grabbed his real and… other… passports (helping Alexis out of one ridiculous jam after another had its pluses), the huge stack of money that Sebastien asked him to hold with no further explanation (and David hadn’t demanded one), and the deed to a town in rural Canada somewhere near Toronto in his dad’s name (misspelled).

He also picked up, carefully, the soft, brown leather holster he hadn’t touched since Sandra had given him the gun to put in it. _ For safety_, she'd insisted, and kissed his cheek wetly. And she would know, since she’d spent way too much time in the narcotics business. 

He shoved everything in the second duffle, threw on his darkest jeans and hoodie, headed towards the door, and then turned around to grab his phone charger from the nightstand. 

He’d found the alley easy enough again, driving this time, and shut off his headlights as he eased his car onto the narrow street. He took a deep breath and that awful, cloying scent filled his lungs—_ forget you ever saw my face— _ and David grabbed the handgun, feeling the shame and rage wash over him again as he thought about what Sebastien had done with that woman _ in their bed_. Bile rose in the back of his throat, and he was done thinking about it. 

_ The man you love… _

Sebastien was in the darkened room when David had finally found it. The woman was sprawled in his lap, kissing him fervently.

_ … is secretly true to someone else. _

“Oh my _ god_,” David cried. He _ felt _ shocked, but he knew what he would find. The evidence was clear and now it was in front of him. He shoved his shaking hand into the front pocket of his hoodie. Sebastien and the woman looked at him, and Sebastien _ laughed_, throwing his head back dramatically as the woman pressed her smirk into his shoulder. David wrapped his fingers around the grip of the gun. 

_ Forget you ever saw my face. _

David had been driving for hours. He’d dropped his powered off phone in a storm drain 90 minutes out of the city, so he was relying on the slightly out of date map he’d kept with the deed. He passed the _ highly questionable _ town sign and pulled into the ‘parking lot’ of...Motel. It was nearly sunrise, and David hoped someone was in the lobby. The sign was blinking VACANCY, and there was a light on in the office area. 

There was a half-asleep woman at the desk, dark hair falling in front of her face as she nodded off every few seconds. “Hi,” David greeted, enjoying the startled expression on her face. Her name tag said Stevie, but there was a thick black X through it, so David wasn’t really sure what to think. 

“Can I… help you?” 

“Hi. Yeah. Yes. I need… a room. For like… a while.” He looked around with forced casualness. 

“...a while?”

“Yes, like… a month. For now.”

She blinked and started clicking around on the computer next to her. “Actually,” David stopped her. “I’m… gonna need to pay cash.” He raised his eyebrows, hoping that… _ Stevie, maybe _… wouldn’t ask any questions. He pulled out a wad of cash from his pocket. 

“Why? Are you on the run?” She asked conspiratorially, leaning in dramatically closer. David tilted his head.

“Oh, yeah, actually, I killed my boyfriend and his secret lover,” he responded, laying on a bit of sarcasm to test the waters. 

“Great!” _ Stevie, maybe _ sounded falsely enthusiastic and she still had a disinterested look on her face. “You’ll want room 10, that’s the furthest from the lobby and there’s no adjoining room.” She snatched a key off a hook behind her. “I’ll just take half of whatever’s in your hand,” she reached out. “And if I need more I’ll let you know.”

David handed her the money and took the key. “Thanks,” he muttered and turned to open the door. He paused in the doorway. “It’s probably best, though,” he turned back, “if you like, forget you ever saw my face.”

_ Stevie, maybe _ put on a serious face. “Understood.” She saluted him. 

He was halfway back to his car before he remembered something. “Hey, hi, me again,” he said, leaning back into the lobby. “Could I get some extra towels? Thanks so much.”

**Author's Note:**

> The fic is based on the song [Dark Lady](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXUH7Wk8-WI) by Cher. David murders Sebastien for cheating on him with the woman who did his tarot reading.


End file.
